When I was a little boy growing up in Elkhorn City, KY, the Clinchfield would run a train from there to Kingsport TN. called the Santa Train. Santa would be on the deck of a observation car and throw candy to kids along the way. It's now part of CSX and still continues today.
Also, once in awhile my uncle Bobby would let my brother and me ride with him on his C&O coal drag up through Ashcamp, KY.
I think it was when I was about 4 hearing the whistle of the S.P.Daylite and going out on the porch and watching it come by,At the time I lived with my grand ma and grand pa in a place called carpentarira(spelling)on the coast of California,some where around Santa Barbaria I'am 64 now and can here an train whistle and still think about it!
J IM
I have three particularly nice memories -
The first one is of driving past the long viaduct which held long strings of tank cars waiting to go into the Standard refinery on the west end of Casper. That was around 1963-64. I was seven / eight years old.
The second is of the track on a bridge crossing over the highway, wich t-itself crossed over Alkali creek at the same point. This is between Powell and Cody Wyoming. One time I was riding with my dad in his highway patrol car at night, and a train passed over us as we crossed the creek. This was around 1965. Last time I looked a few years ago, the highway bridge was still there, although the highway had been re-routed and now crosses the tracks at grade nearby.
The third is of a ride with a C&NW engineer as he switched the industries in Riverton Wyoming in 1974. I had just a month or two earlier graduated from high school. The track that went on to Lander had already been abandoned; the track in Riverton was abandoned a few years after that ride in the cab.
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
Modeling the Baltimore waterfront in HO scale
Too many to list them all, but here are the highlights...
When I was growing up in southeast Michigan during the Sixties, about once every month my family would go to Parmenter's Cider Mill in Northville, MI, beside the C&O mainline that runs from Toledo to Flint. We would get our fresh-squeezed cider and doughnuts, and sit there in the pavilion while a few Northbound trains passed by.
When my family first moved to Maryland (1968), I used to climb to the top of a tall hill with an undisturbed view of the B&O mainline between Washington DC and PointOfRocks, MD. [Sure wish video cameras had been as cheap and plentiful back then as they are today!]
In April 1971, a friend of mine took me on a railfanning trip to Cumberland, MD, and other nearby railfanning hot spots in the region (Harpers Ferry, Brunswick, Hagerstown) - a life-changing trip, it made me a permanent devotee of the B&O.
After getting my drivers license, I would drive to Baltimore to the B&O Riverside Shops to see what motive power was there; one Sunday afternoon I was chatting with the shop electrician, and he said "Wanna ride the helpers?" So I spent the next 4 hours riding in the cabs of an F7A and an ex-C&O GP9 thru the Howard Street Tunnel.
Those are just a small sample of the experiences I remember - I would need a whole book for all the ones after that <LOL>!
-Ken in Maryland (B&O modeler, former CSX modeler)
Too many to say. But a picture is worth 1,000 words.
Standard goods engine helping a 38 class Pacific with a heavy train on Cowan Bank.
I don't know whether it's my favourite but the image that sticks in my head is from about age 4 to 6... a Western Region 4-6-0 coming through Bristol Temple Meads (I think) picking up speed and blowing like crazy because he had been signal checked. (To translate that.. one of the largest passenger steam locos we had approaching and passing through curved platforms working flat out and whistling a protest at having been slowed/not given a clear run through. Our loco whistles are very different from yours... not the long lonesome hoot more "musical"... but LOUD). I ran and held onto one of the station canopy supports (or something like that...) It was a long time ago... I may not recall the detail but I can still feel that thing hammering through.
[In those days signalmen (tower operators) could still get a disciplinary charge for delaying priority trains].
I've gone all goose bumps... weird!
Track memories... hundreds...
Sharing my lunch with a field mouse while attending a signal near central London.
Many dawns (I only see them at work - if I'm at home I automatically sleep until 10.00).
A night where it didn't snow but rained miniscule ice particles.
Moon Rainbows.
Being scared s***less by a horse suddenly sticking his head over a fence and whiffling at me... and the laugh after.
Sorting out the aftermath of several "incidents", mostly derailments (fortunately not with injuries or fatalities). Working flat out and getting the job done
Seems like a lot of us have Father/Son memories going along with our trains. When I was a boy growing up on Long Island, outside of New York City, my Dad took me on the train for a day of riding the New York subways. Back then, you could ride the whole system, all day for as long as you liked, for 15 cents. We rode the front car looking down the tracks to where we were going, and the back car looking back where we'd been. Sometimes we just rode in the middle, down to the end of the line and back. I used to dream about subways and tunnels.
Maybe that's why my layout now has a subway, tunnels and underground stations. I don't have those dreams anymore, since they've become reality.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
jrinnorthcountry63 wrote:what has been your most favorite memory of trains?
Hmmm... difficult question. I vacillate between playing on my simple HO train set with my dad (it was great in the hot Wisconsin summers since it was in the basement) and taking the train from Zurich to Vienna after a fresh snow... probably one of the most beautiful settings you can imagine. Hmmm... still undecided.
Brian
Back in the '50's before my father died, many Summer Sunday afternoons would find us out at my Uncle's farm. Hard by the Norfolk / Suffolk N&W mainline at the corner of Yadkin Rd. and Route 17. We would see Class As racing empty hoppers back to the mines and loads of coal bound for Lambert's point. But, we came to see the Arrow. On that fantastic straight from Suffolk to Norfolk you could see her coming a loooooong way off. First you would see a hint of smoke off and on, over the tracks, and then finally you could make out the engine. You would faintly hear the unbelievably rapid beat of the exhaust fade in and out first, and then get stronger. Then she would start blowing for the Galberry Road crossing and that deep whistle and that exhast was the sweetest sound ever heard. She would blow thru the crossing and then with a ground shaking roar she was there, right in front of us. Huge and black with a slash of N&W red and those silver rods whirling. As often as not the engineer would blow the whistle for that little kid wide eyed beside the tracks; just a little early for Rt. 17, but what the heck, and the fireman would smile and wave. Then those beautiful red cars with the yellow lettering would flash by, and she was gone to Norfolk, usually on the high side of 80 MPH. No matter how many times I saw it it was never enough.
When 611 was restored in the early 80's, I tried to recapture the moment, albeit I wasn't able to be there for the Eastbound run. The Rt. 17 / Yadkid Rd. intersection that used to be a "Stop" sign is now a total of about 13 lanes and 6 stoplights. The farm is now a giant ocean-going container facility with containers stacked 100' high or more. Two huge highway bridges for Interstate 64 sail over the tracks and the road, right about where we used to stand. Then just to really do things in, the (Westbound) train comes along pulled by faded black U boats, and a while later here comes 611, backwards, pulled by another U boat (which broke down West of Suffolk), because she couldn't negotiate the loop track in Norfolk anymore. Oh well, after plowing thru 300 yards of soybeans, a couple of us did get a heck of a cab tour.
A couple of years later I watched 611 and 1218 up Rt. 460 at Windsor. At least that hasn't turned into a metropolis... yet. And, it seemed to me that if I squinted and concentrated hard, there was only one headlight... and I was about 2 feet shorter. And it was real good.
Life is simple - eat, drink, play with trains!
Go Big Red!
PA&ERR "If you think you are doing something stupid, you're probably right!"
Ok, here goes...
Around 1994, I was lucky enough to climb into the cab of a GP40-2 in Guthrie, KY at the RJ Corman/CSX interchange. They let me blow the horn, ring the bell, and everything except drive it. Of course, that was when I was a real little kid. More recently, in 2002, I got the chance to get into the cab of an idling SD70MAC in Crofton, KY on CSX's Henderson Subdivision. They let me ring the bell, blow the horn, etc. They still wouldn't let me drive it! That was when I was around 12 or 13, though. Another good memory was my first 4'x8' layout using a cheap Life Like starter set from like 1993. It was still a layout, though.
Those are some of the best memories of trains I have.
-Brandon
Up to this point that would have to be when my uncle let me use his airbrush to weather a boxcar when I was somewhere around 6.dekruif
http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/prr1223.Html
Strasburg Railroad 4-4-0. That engine ran very well with the trips to Paradise PA. I think around 1989 it failed a boiler test (Crown sheet?) and will probably never run again. I think it is being preserved at the PRR Train Museum.